Page 107 of Witchlight
Then Safi remembered. When she’d agreed to Kahina’s demands to save Caden, Zander, Lev, and all those Hell-Bards, she’d choked out a few final words before all her air was gone:Two conditions. I will kill no one for you, and I will not give my own life.
And there was her answer. There was her strategy.Therewas how Safi would win this latest game against Admiral Kahina of the Red Sails.
True, true, true.
Safi’s magic suffused her. Every spark of Truthwitchery inside of her saturated her organs, her muscles, her pores. It cleared out the rot of the day, of the death, of the smoke and flames and cleaving—and the lies of all this pain. Kahina couldn’t kill her with the ring. Their bargain would not let her.
Safi pushed back into a run.Initiate.
There was the water, there was the Well. She hit the edge of the ice. She leaped up, out, over… and finally toppled into the dark. Cold encased her. The power of Kahina’s jade ring released her. And Safi swam, down, down to the heart of the Well. To where she knew the Solitaire, the Traveler, the Moon, and Death awaited her.
Her fingers brushed Iseult’s skin.Complete.
Safi’s quest was finally over.
LONG AGO
Long ago, when the gods walked among us, there was a monster who wished to become a man. He knew only Moon Mother could change him, so he went out to find her. Rumor was she could be met sometimes in the Sleeping Lands, so he traveled there. And each night of his journey, he prayed to her in the sky, begging her to grant him the gift of humanity.
When he finally reached that border between the safe lands and the lands made all of ice where night lives forever, the Moon Mother heard him. And she actually answered: “Yes, I will grant you this wish, Little Monster. But you must first find me six pots of honey.”
“I can do that,” the monster agreed, already thinking of a beehive he’d found in the south.
“No, no, this is special honey,” the goddess said. “And the pots are not easily obtained. In fact, only a monster such as yourself will be able to do so. Now listen, and I will tell you where they are.
“Follow the Bat in the mountains, to find the soil and stones.
“Follow the Fox and the Iris, to find the tides of home.
“Follow the Hound and the Giant, to find the winds and the storm.
“And follow the Hawk moving eastern, to find what flames have born.
“Follow the Rook to the snowcaps, and you’ll find the soul that begins.
“But it’s in the pitch-deep darkness, that you’ll find where all things end.”
When Moon Mother had finished her rhyme, the monster frowned and shook his head at her. “I don’t understand. Those don’t sound like places where honey might be found.”
“And I told you, this is special honey. Trust me, Little Monster. You will find what you are looking for. And once you have finished, return to me. Here, inside the Sleeping Lands.”
The monster was confused but also excited. He would find the six pots of honey. He would finally become a man. And so, for many months, he traveled and he searched. First, to the west where the mountain bats thrived. He met men—many men—and while most cowered away, some were kind. Some helped him find honey.
The monster feared, though, that it was not thespecialhoney the Moon Mother had wanted him to collect for her.
But onward he went. South. North. East. High, and finally low. In each place, he found what the Moon Mother had described: tides of home or winds and storm or snowcaps where the soul began. Yet never could he find anything but regular honey from regular bees. And after many years of travel—sometimes tracing back to places he’d already gone—he finally had to accept these six pots of regular honey were all he was ever going to find.
So he returned to the Sleeping Lands. “Moon Mother,” he called. “I have done as you asked and traveled where you led. I found honey, though it is not special. Please, please, will you make me a man anyway?”
The goddess arrived. She did not smile, but instead looked sadly down at the little monster. “You found honey, but you are right: this is not the special kind I asked for. And so I cannot make you a man.”
“But there was nothing else in the places you sent me! I found no special honey. I found only people and beasts and tides and storm and flames and mountain. I found pain and love and violence and beauty. But never any special honey. Please, Moon Mother. I have worked hard and traveled far.”
“No, Little Monster. That was not our agreement.”
At first, the monster was angry. He had endured so much for so long. He had learned to be kind even when people were cruel. He had grown physically stronger after many fights against sea foxes and flame hawks. He had seen the most stunning, heartbreaking peaks of the mountains and their glowing, terrifying depths. Yet after all that, now the goddess wasnotgoing to give the monster what he’d asked for?
Yet the longer he stood there, the ice of the Sleeping Lands swirling around him yet neverquitereaching him, the more he realized that Moon Mother was no longer frowning. Instead, she watched him, waiting, as if she knew something he would eventually realize too.
